


and i cannot explain it

by thegatorgood



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Compliant, Prophetic Dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 10:04:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15794274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegatorgood/pseuds/thegatorgood
Summary: Still, no one was asking Ron's dreams to predict the next World Cup winner.  Especially not when he told Mum soon after that Ginny shouldn't go to Diagon Alley with them because her life would be in great danger if she did.Mum had not appreciated that.  Ginny had not appreciated it either and let him know by sticking a spider down the back of his jumper.  So Ron decided he wasn't going to say anything if all it got him was spiders.





	and i cannot explain it

**Author's Note:**

> FOR #11. TY FOR THE INSPIRATION AND EXCUSE TO WRITE THIS. AND ALSO TY TO THE MEMER WHO BETA'D THIS, SHE KNOWS WHO SHE IS.

The thing was, in the beginning, no one took him seriously.

Okay, in the very _very_ beginning, Fred and George were like, "So you say the Muggles he lives with are treating Harry horribly, Ron? And you know this from a dream?" He also knew it because Errol wasn't bringing him any letters from Harry, but Errol was useless, so that didn't really mean anything.

"Well," said Fred, "I suppose we'll have to go look for ourselves. Dad won't mind if we borrow the car."

"After all," said George, looking saintly, "we're only doing it to save the Boy Who Lived from certain mistreatment at the hands of mean, rotten Muggles."

They'd all been surprised when they'd got there and there actually were bars on the window, but still, no one was asking Ron's dreams to predict the next World Cup winner. Especially not when he told Mum soon after that Ginny shouldn't go to Diagon Alley with them because her life would be in great danger if she did.

Mum had not appreciated that. Ginny had not appreciated it either and let him know by sticking a spider down the back of his jumper. So Ron decided he wasn't going to say anything if all it got him was spiders, and by the end of the year when Harry was telling off Lucius Malfoy for slipping the diary into Ginny's cauldron Ron had nearly forgotten he'd had the premonition in the first place.

He had, of course, not forgotten about all the dreams of giant spiders he'd had, but meeting the Acromantulas seemed less like a prophecy fulfilled and more like a sick joke. Although to be honest, so did most of his prophetic dreams.

-

But he hadn't had any so vivid since that last year of the war, he thought, lying on his back and breathing heavily. In the cot a few feet away, Rose seemed to sense he was already awake and so decided not to scream the flat down.

"Good girl," he told her, and lay back down, careful not to wake Hermione. Between work and the baby she was exhausted, and her temper had not lessened with the years. Ron sometimes wished the dreams had told him not to go out with Lavender Brown unless he wanted to be savagely attacked by birds. He had scars from them and the brains. And Splinching himself. It was quite a catalogue of war wounds.

He ran his hands over his face, trying to chase the vestiges of the nightmare from his mind. It had been Azkaban--he'd never been, obviously, but he'd seen pictures of it, and there had been a strong similarity, even after Kingsley's reforms--and Hermione had been struck down by one of the Dark wizards there. He hadn't had a dream that scary since all the ones of Harry drowning during the war, and Ronald Bilius Weasley could feel it in his bones: he could not let Hermione go to Azkaban, although Merlin only knew how he was going to do exactly what she wanted to do.

"You have any ideas?" he asked Rose, who looked at him solemnly from her cot and then blew him a very loud, very wet raspberry. 

Ron's eyes teared up. That was his girl.

-

"No," Ron croaked from where he was sprawled on the sofa, Rose's spit-up all over his pajama shirt. "I'm sure it's just a bit of a cold. You go into work, me and Rose will be fine."

Hermione narrowed her eyes, just as Rose set up an ear-piercing wail that would have made a Welsh Green green with envy for its volume and duration and warbling pitch. "Don't be ridiculous, Ron," she said. "I can stay home one day."

"If you're sure the Ministry can run without you," he said, then coughed weakly into his grubby handkerchief.

Hermione's expression softened. "I'll put the kettle on," she said. "Now go lie down, Ron." As he shuffled off with a passable imitation of a sneeze, he could hear her say, "men," either to herself or to Rose.

Ron lay on the sofa acting as weak and pathetic as he could manage. Most of the time he pretended to be sleeping, but mumbled thanks whenever Hermione brought him tea or soup. She'd say, "Oh, honestly, Ron," but she looked very pleased with herself, and she curled up in their squashy purple armchair, reading the newspaper to Rose and pointing out people in pictures. "That's your aunt Luna," she said, "and her husband Rolf, with a herd of mooncalves. Do you know what a mooncalf is?"

"Bluh," said Rose, and smacked at the paper. She loved watching the images move.

"Yes," said Hermione, "exactly."

Ron peeked at her. He couldn't see through the paper but he could hear her smiling.

Around two in the afternoon Ron grumbled about eating crackers and hobbled off to bed ("you've been snoring, Ron, you'll sleep better in the bedroom") while Hermione and Rose played with her truculent pegbox. "Do I look like a circle?" the triangle was squeaking. "The circle is so much fatter than I am."

The circle was beginning to express how offended it was that the triangle, of all shapes, was calling it fat, when Ron heard Harry's voice interrupt the play.

"What's wrong?" said Hermione. "Harry?"

"Oh, thank god. You weren't at the Azkaban visit."

"No, Ron's ill--Harry, what happened?"

Ron wandered back into the living room and saw Harry's head sticking out of the Floo. He had ash smudged on his chin and his hair was sticking up every which way, but that was how he always looked these days. James kept him and Ginny up most nights and somehow Ginny had decided to get pregnant again because Mum wasn't enough of a cautionary tale about having too many kids in too short a time.

"Rodolphus Lestrange escaped," said Harry heavily. "Got an Auror's wand and attacked Kingsley in the process."

Ron felt bad about that, wondering if Kingsley would have been hurt if he hadn't interfered. But while he liked Kingsley, it was in a decent bloke, great Minister kind of way, not love of his life, mother of his child kind of way, so he didn't feel too bad. Anyway, Kingsley could have gotten hurt even if Hermione had been there. Ron didn't have to believe that, but he chose to. "Is Kingsley okay?"

"Mostly," said Harry. "The Healers stuck a few ointments on his arm and yelled at him to go home, so of course he's back at the Ministry organizing the manhunt." He was grinning a little as he said it. Kingsley was a bit mad when it came to his duties.

"Was anyone else hurt?" Ron asked Harry.

Harry shook his head. "Not that I've heard of. But I knew Hermione was supposed to be on the visit, and when I didn't see her at the Ministry--"

"Yeah," said Ron soberly, like he hadn't been fearing that for days. "Close call."

"I would have been fine," said Hermione dismissively. "But--I should be in the office to coordinate the response before Rita can get her claws into this-- Ron, are you--?"

"'m feeling a lot better." It was the truth: he was so relieved that she was okay, that she was going to be okay. "You were right about the nap, and all the tea and soup did wonders."

Hermione looked relieved too. Being told she'd been right always improved her mood. 

"Okay," said Harry. "See you at work, but I should warn you it's insane over here."

Hermione looked vaguely affronted that Harry didn't think she could handle Ministry madness. There were probably times when she was the maddest one there. "I'll be right there," she said, and Harry must have shrugged on the other end of the Floo before pulling his head back. Wise choice, Ron wanted to say. Wise choice.

"I have to put my robes on," Hermoine said distractedly. "Here--" She started to hand Rose off to Ron, but then froze. For a second, he saw, she didn't want to go back to work right away. She didn't want to right the world.

"I was thinking," she said slowly, as she gave Rose over, "I really miss this. And it's shameful, how little maternity leave the Ministry's given me."

"It is," said Ron. She actually hadn't used all of it.

"I mean, it's the twenty-first century," she said, "and I have to parcel it out like they haven't had witches in government since the beginning. I know that they had to reform it when the Head of Mysteries turned her undersecretaries into free childcare, but if they'd been more generous about alternative work arrangements in the first place it wouldn't have been necessary."

"I know," said Ron again, and kissed her on the forehead. "Please remember to run the name of the campaign by me before you make badges."

She rolled her eyes. "Who said anything about badges?" she asked as she pulled her robes over her head, eyes twinkling. "I might litigate."

And off she marched, to do battle and restore order, but first she reminded him Rose was due a bottle in a few hours and not to order pizza again for dinner, there was perfectly good leftover chicken soup in the fridge.

"You look beautiful!" he called after her. She shouted her thanks back over the whooshing of the Floo and Ron sagged onto the bed and smiled.

He could order a pizza tomorrow. It was Ron's fervent belief that if more wizards had access to Muggle takeaway, anti-Muggle sentiment would rapidly become a thing of the past.

"Success," Ron declared as he lifted Rose up and over into her cot.

She gave him a conspiratorial glance and a toothless smile and then reached out and stuck her fingers in his nose.

-

"You missed my birthday," said Ron. "So we are going to go out and get smashed in a Muggle pub for lunch, so we can enjoy it before I have to down a Sobering Draught and hide it from Hermione."

George snorted. "She'd smell the draught and know."

"That I'd had a drink," said Ron, and winked exaggeratedly. "Not that I'd had many drinks. C'mon, George, the shop will still be here tomorrow."

He'd have said he'd never have thought George would be so dedicated to avoiding fun, but that would have reminded them both of the old days. George had been a bit down recently, ever since Percy, the great idiot, named his son Frederic. They all missed Fred, but they didn't need to be reminded of how much every time they had holiday dinners together.

It helped a little that Fred Number Two was a horribly mischievous toddler and Percy was constantly at his wits' ends. Served him right.

Ron also did not say, "You're working yourself to death," because of the d-word and also, he thought, as he spelled up a _Closed for the Day_ sign and locked the doors, because today that may very well have been proven true.

George looked around the inside of the pub with surprise. "I could have sworn there was a store selling those video boxes Dad could never figure out how to work, next to the Cauldron, the last time I was out in Muggle London."

"Nah, that's long gone," said Ron. "But this one is new anyway. They only started it a few years back--used to be some kind of boutique before, failed utterly, even Muggles weren't going to dress up like that. But it's doing quite well, which you'll understand once you have the food. You ought to get out more."

George's brow furrowed and then he deflected. "Oi, don't you have a kid? What are you doing, trying out different pubs?"

"I," said Ron, "like their salads for lunch. And besides, if me and Neville are in the pub, we're not going to wake Rose up in the middle of her nap."

"Smooth," said George, and lifted his pint.

Ron made sure they got a booth in the back, and that the waitress would bring them some curry when it was ready. "Don't think you're getting out of it that easy," he said. The Muggles always had a few different fancy beers on tap, and this one was dark and strong and sweet. "When was the last time you went out anywhere? And going over the books with Val in a late-night chip shop doesn't count."

"Dunno," said George. "Charlie asked me to visit him in Romania two years ago, but I couldn't, not before the holiday rush."

"'cause I ran into Angelina the other day, at the broom shop. She says she hasn't seen you in forever--I bet she wouldn't mind if you took her out to lunch."

George's pint hovered in midair for a second and then he snorted. "Ron, what you know about women could fit in a Pygmy Puff's food bowl."

"Maybe," said Ron, "but I talked it over with Hermione."

George's pint hand stopped again, but for much, much longer. All of Ron's siblings were more scared of Hermione than they were of Mum, and that was a truly impressive feat. (Except when it came to Ginny, who'd never been that scared of Mum to begin with.) "She wouldn't want to go out with me," said George. "It was Fred she was interested in at school."

Ron masterfully stopped himself from wincing, and recovered quickly. "Maybe she wants to talk about him with you," he said, looking George in the eyes. "Look, I know you miss him the most, but you're not the only one who misses him."

"Damn it, Ron," said George.

"Remember the time when--"

Ron had been afraid it would be too painful, but it wasn't. George wanted to talk about Fred. He wanted to talk about how they'd shared a bedroom for eighteen years, and how when they'd made enough money for real flats it had been weird not waking up to an almost exact copy of his face in the morning. He wanted to talk about how awful it had been, how sudden. He wanted to talk about what a prat Percy was (not that that was news). He wanted to stay in the Muggle pub with Ron and get sloshed, and by the time they headed back towards the shop Ron had forgotten about his dream and they were staggering through a surprisingly deserted Leaky Cauldron and then out into what seemed like one of the scenes from the war.

George, who hadn't dreamed Ron's dream, and had about thirty pounds on Ron to soak up the extra alcohol and no children who robbed him of his sleep at night, stopped cold. Ron stumbled into him, peered blearily at the devastation, and swore. 

Perkins stopped them both. She'd been in Ron's year at school, he remembered, and had gone into DMLE, not as an Auror but something less glamorous, more down to earth. She was wearing a set of garishly flashing safety robes and he hoped she was well-compensated for that alone. "We've closed off the alley," she said. "You two should call the Knight Bus to take you home."

"What happened?" asked George. Ron had an idea but he was still trying to rubberneck over Perkins's head. He was a foot taller than she was, she couldn't stop him.

"Lestrange. That damned escaped Death Eater. Tried to attack Gringotts."

"Not the brightest phoenix in the flock," murmured Ron. He needed the Sobering Draughts he'd brought in his pockets. Except they weren't. They were in his cloak pockets and his cloak was at Weasley Wizarding Wheezes because you couldn't wear a cloak in Muggle London after February without looking like an absolute tosser. 

Perkins sighed and summoned up some water for them. "No. And when he couldn't get past their guards he went on a rampage. A few people had to go to St. Mungo's, but they'll be right as rain by the end of the week. Or next week."

"Cheers," said Ron, and downed his water.

And then George grabbed him. George, Ron realized, was hugging him. And it was not like the hearty congratulatory hugs Ron had gotten at his wedding or Rose's christening, but a desperate sort of hug, a Mum when she was visiting you in the hospital wing sort of hug.

Ron patted his brother's back. "You okay?"

"If you hadn't dragged me out to the pub," said George, "the shop would’ve been--. He'd have--attacked it, attacked us. Kids could’ve been hurt, Val could’ve been hurt, _you_ could’ve been hurt--"

"You could have been hurt too," Ron felt it only fair to point out, although the Mum hug was a strangling one that made it a little hard to get the words out.

George tightened his grip. "No, listen, Ron, you could’ve been hurt--."

“Think you already said that,” said Ron.

“‘m so glad I listened to you.”

"Right, I know you didn’t already say that, you've never before said that in your life--"

"I miss him," said George, possibly crying, possibly drooling, into Ron's robes, "but I’d miss you, and Val, and me. I’d miss-- You know, I haven’t played a prank on anyone-- _anyone_ \--in years? Not even Percy. Fred’d be so ashamed of me.” He hiccoughed. “I’m gonna owl Angelina about lunch."

Ron hoped that the lunch thing wasn’t connected to the prank thing, and he’d have suggested George sober up first, but he was almost out of air. And besides, Angelina would understand. She was a good witch like that.

(Later that week, he had a dream where Mum roped him into wedding planning for George and Angelina because they credited Ron for getting them together, and he was being steered around shops looking at different lace patterns and seating arrangements, but in the dream he also got to sample the tasting menus so it could have been worse.)

-

A couple of days later, after he and Hermione had turned in early for a bit of a cuddle and Ron had drifted off to sleep thinking how nice that had been, and how her hair may have been tickling his nose but he wouldn't want to move even if she hadn't been lying on his arm, he had the dream. He was sitting in a Muggle tent, wearing spangly purple robes, behind a sign that said, _The Amazing Roonil Wazlib Tells Your Future, 5 pounds_.

"That seems a bit low," he said, although it wasn't low enough to tempt any of the gray shapes of Muggles sauntering past. "Oi!" he said. "I'm telling the future here!"

They continued to ignore him. And then it struck Ron: if the writing was on the other side of the sign, how did he know what it said? 

"You're in a dream, my dear boy."

Ron turned, skin crawling with trepidation. Which was still better than spiders.

Professor Dumbledore was sitting next to him. He was wearing the exact same sort of robes that Ron was, except with more spangles and somehow he looked far less ridiculous.

"Hello, sir," he said. "Er. No offense, but I really hope this isn't one of those prophetic dreams."

"No," said Dumbledore cheerfully. He unwrapped a chocolate frog and popped it into his mouth. "I think it's more of a subconscious giving you advice sort of dream."

"Good," said Ron. "Because this? This is terrible."

Dumbledore looked at him with mingled commiseration and condescension. 

It took Ron a minute, and then he swore. "But this is prophetic, isn't it? When I see the future, no one's interested, because no one believes it."

"Quite." Dumbledore gave him a chocolate frog. Ron's face was on the card but he felt it'd be rude to read his own biography while his dead war hero headmaster was sitting next to him, so he put it in his pocket. "I myself never put much stock in divination--I nearly had it stopped as a subject at Hogwarts."

"Well, why did you?"

Dumbledore ate another chocolate frog while pondering the question. Or being dramatically suspenseful. It was hard to tell. "The thing most people get wrong about divination," he said, finally, "is they ascribe all sorts of grand visions and prophecies to it, and assume an over-reverential attitude to it and its practitioners. No one who sat through Sybil's tea leaf- or palm-reading will, long-term, mistake the subject for something that will change the world. And that is good, because while we both know there are consequential prophecies out there, they mostly only have consequences because people choose to act upon them. The vast majority of natural divination doesn't concern itself with momentous events on a global or even societal scale: it is for the most part a matter of quiet gifts, of knowing which words will change a person's life, or that if a child is given a potions set for a third birthday present, she will grow up to invent the Wolfsbane Potion and thereby relieve the suffering of scores of individuals. Or, of course, knowing which hippogryffs to bet on, thereby making oneself filthy rich."

"Preventing the people I love from dying doesn't sound very small to me," said Ron.

Dumbledore glanced away, and then said, evenly, "And of course it is not, and I did not mean to imply it. Only that Divination, at its best, changes the world in small ways at first, and Seers, at their best, act for those they love, and not out of a grand desire to change the world."

Ron was mollified by that. After all, hadn't he saved Hermione from Lestrange last month? And Hermione was definitely going to change the world one day. And during the war, when he'd gone back for Harry.... Ron hadn't been doing that because he'd known that if Harry died no one could defeat Voldemort, and then they'd lose the war. He'd done it because Harry was his best friend and he didn't want his best friend to die.

"Thanks," he said.

"For what?" sneered Dumbledore, who'd turned into Draco Malfoy (black robe, no spangles, but, weirdly enough, with Dumbledore's glasses and long silver mustache and beard) when Ron wasn't looking. Ron screamed and woke up, went back to sleep, and, almost inevitably, dreamed that Rodolphus Lestrange had gotten into the Ministry and made his way to Harry's office, and Harry was in mortal peril once again.

-

Ron tried. He really did. He set up an old reunion-type thing that Harry cancelled on because they were really busy with work at the moment. He sabotaged the windows in Harry's office but he must not have done that good of a job, because they were fixed in a few hours instead of a few weeks, which was the usual timeframe for the Weather Corps. Finally, in a fit of desperation, Ron asked George, who owed him one, to babysit Rose, and Flooed into the Ministry on the morning of the day Lestrange was prophesied to be there.

"Hermione kick you out of her office again?" Harry asked. His glasses were smudged and askew and he had green ink on the side of his face.

"I can come visit you if I want," said Ron. "Though you should be kicked out of your office until you get some sleep. James keep you up all night?"

Harry yawned. "I've been here all night," he confessed, apparently too exhausted to be sheepish about it. "We're short-staffed--and this Lestrange thing--"

"All the more reason for you to go home and sleep," Ron said. "Seriously, do you want to be dealing with a Death Eater when you're so tired your robes are on backwards?"

Harry glanced down, frowning. His eyes even crossed for a second or two, and after another four or five seconds he said, "They're not on backwards."

"I tried." Even without the visions of Rodolphus Lestrange, Ron would have seriously considered stupefying his friend and leaving him to sleep it off in the closet. The only thing stopping him was that Harry had always been better at dueling than him and no amount of lost sleep was going to change that. "Look, you're not doing yourself or anyone else any favors by pushing this hard. What if an emergency came up? Wouldn't you rather be rested?"

"What ki--" Harry broke for a yawn. "What kind of emergency?"

"Dunno," said Ron, aware of how weird "I've had a prophetic dream and a very very bad person will be in the Ministry today, right in your office" would sound, especially to someone who'd spent three years of divination lessons roundly mocking the classes, the assignments, the course books, the teacher, and basically the entire notion of telling the future with him. "What if Ginny needs you? She's due in what, two weeks?"

"Three," said Harry, "and James arrived exactly on his due date--five past twelve in the afternoon, remember?--so Ginny'll be fine. The Healers said this has been a textbook pregnancy."

"You really want to take that chance? If you miss the birth, Mum'll kill you."

Harry, who had never really known the wrath of Molly Weasley, just smiled at Ron like he was mental. It accentuated the streak of green ink on his cheek.

"Come on," Ron wheedled. "This isn't the war, there's no prophecy that says Harry James Potter has to be at work today or the world is going to end. Just--wouldn't you like to spend more time with your kid? Even Hermione is taking time off to teach Rose about the legislative process, and that's Hermione." And Rose wasn't even talking yet, not really, but try telling Hermione that. 

"Is that why she called in sick three times this month?" Harry yawned again. "Anyway, Andromeda's looking after James today to give Ginny a break."

Ron shuddered. He knew Tonks's mother wasn't necessarily a bad person, and she had lost a lot, but she still looked like her dead crazy sister, and every time Ron saw her he saw Bellatrix standing over Hermione with that knife. "You could see Teddy too."

"Look," said Harry, "how about you help me with this mess, and I'll leave on time today? Promise."

"Even if we're not finished with the paperwork?" There was a lot of paper. It looked like someone had snuck into Harry's office and cursed his desk with that duplicating spell Gringotts used to bury would-be burglars, except you'd have to be mental to want to steal any of this.

"Does it look like I'm ever finished with paperwork?"

It did not. Ron would have liked to get Harry to safety, but if Harry wasn't going to go, Ron would just have to stay here and protect him. Lestrange wouldn't do that well two-on-one, even if Harry's head was currently sagging over a stack of forms. Ron was expecting him, and that was what mattered.

And yet he wasn't expecting it when the door slammed open and Rodolphus Lestrange's filthy, hulking form blocked out the light. Ron jumped to his feet, fumbling for his wand, and hit Lestrange with a Jelly Legs Jinx at the same time Harry got him with a Stupefy. 

Lestrange crashed to the floor. He smelled even worse up close, Ron noticed.

He also had his hands bound behind him with some kind of silver cord and he wasn't holding a wand.

Ron looked up from the Death Eater's prone form and saw, still standing in the doorway, Narcissa Malfoy. She seemed disappointed, but then again, she was Malfoy's mum so maybe her face had just frozen that way twenty-odd years ago.

"Mr. Potter," she said. "I believe the Ministry is looking for this man?"

"Er," said Harry. He had a polite smile petrified onto his face. "Yes?"

Narcissa Malfoy sniffed. "Well, aren't you going to take him into custody?"

Harry glanced down at Lestrange. Ron kept his hand on his wand, in case Malfoy tried to strike while Harry was distracted. "He looks apprehended enough for now, thanks. Can I ask how you found him?"

"You may," she said, even more sniffily. "He came to us for--I don't know. Help? Revenge? Regardless, the peacocks chased him up a tree and he dropped his wand."

"A bunch of birds beat Rodolphus Lestrange?"

Narcissa Malfoy raised at eyebrow in Ron's direction. "I see you have not made the acquaintance of our flock. The Malfoys have a long history of keeping guard birds. He should be grateful it wasn't the swans."

"You people are mental," said Ron, and sat back down on Harry's desk.

"Well," said Harry awkwardly. "Thank you and your peacocks. You're, uh. Doing well?"

"Yes, thank you. You?"

Ron looked down at his hands instead of burying his face in them and tried not to groan. He would have blamed Andromeda but she was too scary and it wasn't her fault anyway. It was sort of Sirius's fault for being Harry's godfather and related to a bunch of nutters, _and_ Harry had been raised with a snobbish Muggle aunt and an awful Muggle cousin and Ron thought that maybe that made Narcissa and Draco Malfoy feel very familiar, almost familial, to him.

"Much better knowing that he," Narcissa Malfoy didn't kick Lestrange, but the tone of her voice implied that she'd like to, if it weren't beneath her, "is going back to Azkaban, where he can't threaten my family." And then her voice went from glacial to merely frosty. "Draco and Astoria are expecting a child."

"Wow," said Harry. "Congratulations. Ginny's pregnant too--they'll be in the same year at Hogwarts, I guess. With Ron and Hermione's kid."

This did not seem to excite Narcissa Malfoy any more than it did Ron. She nodded curtly and swept out.

"Cheer up," said Harry. "It could have been worse."

"Yeah." But Ron wasn't cheering up, because the part of the dream where Lestrange had shown up in Harry's office had happened, right, but not the part where Harry was in mortal peril. Rodolphus Lestrange wasn't going to be anyone's problem for a while, and Narcissa Malfoy hadn't presented much in the way of mortal peril, unless she was capable of judging people to death. "Didn't know you were so chummy with the Malfoys."

Harry knelt by Lestrange, checked his bindings, and prepared a memo that flapped its way out of the office and brought a couple of Aurors rushing in to grab Lestrange and drag him back to Azkaban. After all that, Harry finally said, "We're not, really. I'm just--trying to see if Andromeda will forgive her sister. She doesn't have much family left. So it helps to be on good-ish terms with Narcissa. And she did save my life."

"Once," said Ron. "Like, eight years ago. For her own purposes."

Harry shrugged again. "I think--"

Whatever he thought, he didn't have time to say, because they had another unwelcome visitor. Percy was standing in the doorway and clearing his throat loudly. 

"Oh, come on," said Ron. "I have clearance to be here. I'm a war hero, you know."

"It's not that," said Percy, although now he looked even more sour, because he was a stickler and a prat. He had that pinched look around his mouth like Ron was seven and had used his favorite ink to paint Errol blue all over again. "It's that," he said, "our mother called on my official office Floo because she could not contact Harry to let him know that Ginny is in St. Mungo's, because the baby is coming early, and I would ask that you get there before she interrupts an another important meeting."

Ron's mouth sagged open. _It'd been a joke_ , he could almost hear himself pleading with the Dumbledore from his dream. _It'd been a joke!_

But that did, he reflected as Harry sparked up the fire and got the Floo powder out, explain his premonition about mortal peril. Mum really would have killed Harry if he worked through the kid's birth.

-

"All right there, Ginny?" Ron asked, when all the hugging and crying and congratulations were out of the way.

"Yeah," she said. Either she'd asked for the good potions or Mum had bullied the Healers into getting them for her. She stroked the baby's head: he had black hair, like James. Most of this generation weren't really redheaded: Victoire and Louis were strawberry blonds, Rose's hair an auburn at best. Percy's kids were true gingers, which was probably just chance but George liked to say it was because Percy was a suck-up on a genetic level. "It went fast. This little guy was in a hurry."

Hermione had been into stuff on natural birth and her labor had been fifty-one hours long and she'd beamed at the end of it like she'd set some kind of record or earned extra points. Ron wished she were here, but the Healers were already looking mutinous about the number of Weasleys and honorary Weasleys crowding the ward.

"Is he going to be okay?" asked Harry from where he was looking down at the kid with much more concern than a rampaging Death Eater had elicited. "He's so small."

"Well," said Ron, "both his parents are midgets, so it fig--"

Ginny kicked him.

"He'll be fine." Ron rubbed at the future bruise on his thigh. "You two have a name in mind?"

"Yeah," said Harry. "Albus Severus."

Ginny went completely po-faced. So they had discussed it, Ron thought. He didn't need to be a seer to know that that wasn't going to be an easy name for a kid to bear.

But instead of saying anything, he bent over and got a closer look at his nephew, Albus Severus Potter. He looked like most babies did: face like a saggy tomato, a scowl worthy of old Acerbus Cromblehome, a snub of a nose Ron could just reach out and put in his pocket. He opened his eyes. They were unfocused and blue and a flash of insight came to Ron, like a waking dream.

"One day, Albie," he said, "you are going to meet a tall and beautiful woman. And if you know what's good for you, you will immediately turn and run the other way."

Ginny snorted and rolled her eyes. Harry seemed too lost in contemplating his son (or maybe dwelling on the past) to have registered anything else. But Mum, who'd come back into the room and heard that last, said, "Ronald!"

"I'll see you at the christening!" Ron yelled, and hurried out.


End file.
